


Rings and Things and Buttons and Bows

by rosa_himmelblau



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:02:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27213139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: New love can be hard on the wardrobe.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	Rings and Things and Buttons and Bows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marja-Kristina Akinsha](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Marja-Kristina+Akinsha).



"You're back," Mrs. Soo said flatly.

"Yeah," Starsky said, rather embarrassed. She'd been friendly when he first started coming here, but in the last few weeks she'd gotten kind of chilly. "I've got eight shirts that need laundering and four of 'em—" he held out a sandwich bag with little buttons in it. "I think I found 'em all, but, you know, whatever you've got, it's fine. Just so long as I've got the same number of buttons as button holes."

Mrs. Soo was blinking at him, not taking the bag, not touching the pile of shirts he'd dropped on the counter. "Why do you keep coming here?"

Starsky looked around. "This is a laundry, right? You wash my shirts, you sew my buttons back on—"

"What kind of job do you do?" she interrupted.

"I'm a police detective," Starsky said and took out his badge to show her, but she barely glanced at it. "Is something wrong? Did my check bounce?"

"No! If your check bounced, it would be pinned to the Wall of Shame!" Mrs. Soo pointed at the wall behind her, which was covered with what Starsky assumed were bounced checks.

"Wow, that's a lot of checks," he said.

Mrs Soo shook her head. She picked up a shirt and looked at the front where there were three missing buttons, the fabric they'd been torn from frayed. "Fishing line," she said.

"What?" Starsky was becoming more and more confused.

"First time you brought in your shirts and a bag of buttons, I fixed the damage and sewed the buttons back on."

"I remember," Starsky said. "You did such a great job, I couldn't even tell which ones had fallen off."

"Fallen off?" Mrs. Soo sounded like every defense attorney who'd ever cross-examined him on the witness stand. "Your buttons did not fall off. Your buttons were ripped off!"

Well. Yeah. That was true. The first time he'd brought his shirts in for repair as well as laundering, there were three of them. It was three days after his first time with Hutch.

"Uh-huh," Starsky agreed. He wondered if he was blushing. He felt like he was blushing.

"Second time you came in with buttons to be sewn on, there were nine shirts. That time, I used heavy-duty thread and double-stitched them."

He suddenly wondered where Hutch took his torn shirts. And what about that pair of slacks with the zipper . . . well, without the zipper, once Starsky got done with them.

"Last time," Mrs. Soo went on, "last time, there were a dozen shirts and after I mended them, I used fishing line to put the buttons back on." She shook the shirt she held at him. "This one, I remember! Look, you see? This button, the one that's still on? Fishing line. But look here." Her fingers moved down to where there was a hole where the button had been. "This is where the button was and now there's a hole because I did my job good! What are you doing with these shirts? Do you have wild animals at home?"

Well. Yeah. He did have the one wild animal, although right now he was cooling his heels, waiting in the car for Starsky. "No, ma'am."

She shook her head, looking very disappointed. "I don't know what more to do with your buttons. I don't know what I could use that would be any stronger. The fishing line—" she shook her head.

"Mrs. Soo, I have an idea. Instead of using something stronger, just sew them kind of flimsy. They're going to come off no matter what you do, so just put them on strong enough to keep them on for a couple of wears. Then I'll bring 'em back in and you can fix them again."

"You need to settle down," Mrs. Soo said, but she took the bag of buttons from him and gathered up the shirts. "Find yourself a nice girl. Get married. You're not living right."

"Yes, ma'am" Starsky said.

"What took you so long?" Hutch asked as Starsky slid in behind the wheel.

"My laundress chewed me out. I'm living such an immoral lifestyle, even high test fishing line won't keep my buttons on."

"Is that why I had so much trouble with them?" Hutch asked. "I was wondering why it suddenly got so much harder to get your shirt off. At least she accepted them. My laundry service told me to take my shirts someplace else."

"Well, you can’t bring them here,” Starsky said. “You don't even pick up your buttons! You've gotta at least give 'em the buttons to sew back on. I think some of the buttons I took in were yours."

"Buttons?" Hutch asked. "I'm lucky to have both sleeves to give them. I had to throw away that one pair of slacks."

"You could've had 'em mended," Starsky said.

"Really? What was I going to say, that I was attacked by a wolverine?"

"Maybe we need to start undressing ourselves," Starsky said, "instead of undressing each other."

"Maybe," Hutch said doubtfully. "But it won't be as much fun."

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because Marja-Kristina Akinsha was talking about how often the boys lost their buttons.


End file.
